Elizabeth Hoover, an environmental science professor at the University of California, Berkeley , apologized on Monday after she was ...
Elizabeth Hoover, an environmental science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, apologized on Monday after she was accused of falsely claiming to have Native American heritage.
The academic released a lengthy “letter of apology and accountability” on her personal website expressing regret for the “hurt, harm, and broken trust” she caused by asserting that she has Mohawk and Mi’kmaq ancestry. She admitted that she had benefited from programs and funding opportunities which were “identity-related or geared towards under-represented people.”
“I hurt Native people who have been my friends, colleagues, students, and family, both directly through fractured trust and through activating historical harms,” Hoover wrote, adding, “I have negatively impacted people emotionally and culturally. For this hurt I have caused, I am deeply sorry.”
Hoover had already released an apology in October rescinding her claims to Native American identity, explaining she had been told by her parents that she had associations with the two tribes but noting that census records do not substantiate the claims. Students at Berkeley drafted a collective statement one month later asking for her resignation, garnering more than 350 signatures from faculty members, organizations, and prior associates of Hoover.
“Growing up I did not question who I was told I was, or how I identified. But as an adult, as an academic, I should have done my due diligence to confirm that my ancestors were who I was told they were,” Hoover continued. “In my twenties and thirties, I lived in different Native communities, where I knew I did not have the breadth and depth of connection that these folks had to Native family, history, and culture. At the time I wrongly felt that my distant connection was enough for me to claim a Native identity alongside them.”
Hoover promised that she would make donations to Native American “farm, food sovereignty, and educational programs,” as well as put away her “dance regalia, ribbons skirts, moccasins, and Native jewelry.” She also vowed to direct future research toward “supporting people and communities with whom I have an authentic relationship and will accept spaces where communities ask me to step back” as part of her “restorative justice” efforts.
Many white academics have incorrectly asserted that they have minority heritage in recent years. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a former Harvard Law School professor, infamously said she was a Cherokee for nearly four decades but apologized to the nation in 2019 after a genetic test confirmed that she was as little as 0.1% Native American. Jessica Krug, a former history professor at George Washington University, resigned three years ago after she falsely claimed for years to be African American, and Kelly Sharp, a former professor at Furman University, resigned months later after she incorrectly claimed to be Chicana.
Adrienne Keene, an ethnic studies professor at Brown University and a member of the Cherokee nation who previously worked with Hoover, published a letter on Tuesday containing extensive research she had conducted into the Hoover family in an unsuccessful attempt to verify their Native American associations.
“I found no Indigenous ties on the lines that she had claimed, tracing back to her great-great-great grandparents,” Keene remarked. “Her story fell apart very quickly, within a few clicks, but the subsequent months were spent trying every avenue to find something that would explain her claims, triangulating and triple checking, looking in new databases, finding more and new documents, or going back another generation.”
Hoover appeared on an “Alleged Pretendian List,” a spreadsheet created by an activist to expose white people who falsely claimed Native American ethnicity, more than two years ago. Keene had initially started the research in order to exonerate Hoover.
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